Declaration of the Occupation of New York CityThis document was accepted by the NYC General Assembly on September 29, 2011, with minor updates made on October 1, 2011. It is the first official, collective statement of the protesters in Zuccotti Park.

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage. They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses. They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one's skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation. They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization. They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices. They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions. They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right. They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay. They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility. They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance. They have sold our privacy as a commodity. They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit. They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce. They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them. They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil. They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit. They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit. They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media. They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt. They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas. They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Not sure what to think of this as I haven't spent too much time/effort researching what its all supposed to be about.

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October 6th, 2011, 9:17 am

regularjoe12

Off. Coordinator – Joe Lombardi

Joined: March 30th, 2006, 12:48 amPosts: 3987Location: Davison Mi

Re: Occupy Wall Street

im gonna call this luooney babble. who is this "they" that he keeps refering to? at first he is clearly talking about big banks...but at the end he's talking weapons of mass destruction? and he's EVRYWHERE in between. I wont say he doesnt have any valid points, but untill he actually has a focus and direction to what he's trying to say....he might as well be wearing a tin foil hat.

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October 6th, 2011, 10:14 am

TheRealWags

Modmin Dude

Joined: December 31st, 2004, 9:55 amPosts: 12296

Re: Occupy Wall Street

regularjoe12 wrote:

im gonna call this luooney babble. who is this "they" that he keeps refering to? at first he is clearly talking about big banks...but at the end he's talking weapons of mass destruction? and he's EVRYWHERE in between. I wont say he doesnt have any valid points, but untill he actually has a focus and direction to what he's trying to say....he might as well be wearing a tin foil hat.

Corporations (wall st, big banks, etc) would be my guess

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October 6th, 2011, 10:24 am

Pablo

RIP Killer

Joined: August 6th, 2004, 9:21 amPosts: 9596Location: Dallas

Re: Occupy Wall Street

and these same businesses have DRAMATICALLY improved our standards of living over the last 100 years, but we seem to forget all the good they have done. By the way, seems like zero individual accountability to me so lts blame corporations - nice.

Let's look at the first few:

1) Foreclosure - you know what there is a simple solution here, don't buy more house than you can afford and pay your mortgage. You also sign a contract that lays out the consequences of not paying for your house.

2) As for the bailouts, haven't they been repaid for the most part by corporations? I can think of many individuals and governments that could learn a lesson here.

3) Inequity and discrimination in the workplace, really? I'm not saying this is totally eliminated but tell me at what point in the history of the world has there been less inequity and discrimination than there is now?

4) Poisened the food supply? So I guess you would rather take your chances on food/drink in another country? Let me know how that works out for you.

5) Profited off the tourture, etc to animals? Because this never happened prior to the rise of the industrial nation? Lets blame companies for this.

6) Strip employees the right to negotiate better pay and safe working condiditons? That is funny, I know plenty of people who have switched jobs and pay has always been a negotiation piont. And if your job isn't safe, well as far as I know you aren't forced to stick with that job.

7) Held students hostage? Cause we force them to go to school and take on debt? Education is a human right? Aren't we pretty much granted an education through high school? So is college a human right as well?

I'm not even sure who these guys are targeting, I'm guessing businesses but it could be government as well, but their platform is a joke.

sorry but that letter sounds like it was written by a hippy thats been in one too many drum circles. "bring down the coorporations maaaann, they're killin mother gia, and dont use toilet paper either you tree killer"

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October 6th, 2011, 10:29 am

TheRealWags

Modmin Dude

Joined: December 31st, 2004, 9:55 amPosts: 12296

Re: Occupy Wall Street

CSM wrote:

Occupy Wall St.: Not a head scratcher

The more interesting question is, what took so long for such protests to show up?

By Jared Bernstein, Guest blogger / October 6, 2011

Last night I heard a story on NPR about the Wall St. protest that is now spreading to other cities. The gist of the story was: “what are these protests really about? What do they want?”

I’m sorry, but that’s just not a head scratcher. Do these news analysts think it’s a coincidence that they’re occupying Wall St. as opposed to Columbus Ave north of 79th ?

As Andrew Sorkin put it today (after writing that the message was “at times…hard to discern”):

“…the demonstrators are seeking accountability for Wall Street and corporate America for the financial crisis and the growing economic inequality gap.”

I’m not saying everyone down there is ready to give a clear exposition of the facts of the case, but commentators can stop scratching their heads now.

I’ve been writing about these problems for decades. Sometimes they’ve gotten a little better, but mostly they’ve gotten worse. Before the downturn, the share of income held by the top 1% was 23.5%, the highest since 1928 and more than twice the 10% level of the late 1970s.

RELATED: In pictures: Wall Street protests

These are growth shares, as in they have to sum to 100%–when one group’s share goes up like that, everybody else’s has to shrink.

That doesn’t mean real income values can’t rise for other groups, of course (though it does imply slower relative growth, compared to the high end). But in fact, the middle class and the poor haven’t seen that either…the decade of the 2000s saw middle-incomes decline in real terms for working-age households. The recession just made those incomes fall faster.

Protest movements are often born of two interacting injustices: the lack of opportunity and the lack of accountability by the persons perceived to be blocking that opportunity.

Given the facts of the income distribution, the trends in real middle-class incomes and poverty, the failure of policy to do much to change these trends, the government bailouts of the only class that’s benefited from the recovery so far, the absence of clear punishment/accountability for the financial and political institutions that helped inflate the debt bubble that continues to squeeze economies across the globe, and the dysfunctionality of the current political system (they’re arguing more about whether they can keep the lights on than whether they can help solve the economic problems), the more interesting question is what took so long for such protests to show up?

They protest corporations, yet look at the videos closely, and you'll find every one of them with ipods, ipads and macbooks. Apple is a corporation. Is it anti-corporatism, except the ones we like?

I think the message is so scattered for a reason. Its to get those that are upset to join the cause, even if they don't agree with 100% of what they're saying. If you really want to know the purpose, just look at who's joining and who's funding it. Soros, Unions, Communist and Socialist groups. As soon as they mentioned Loan forgiveness for student loans, (Wall street doesn't hold those, Obamacare took over the entire student loan business) and free college for all, it was obvious who is behind it.

October 6th, 2011, 11:07 am

TheRealWags

Modmin Dude

Joined: December 31st, 2004, 9:55 amPosts: 12296

Re: Occupy Wall Street

Honestly, it kind of reminds of the original TEA party movement when it was just forming/starting....

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October 6th, 2011, 11:08 am

njroar

Player of the Year - Offense

Joined: September 25th, 2007, 3:20 amPosts: 2841

Re: Occupy Wall Street

Oh, I don't discount the movement, but its the polar opposite of the tea party. Tea party started due to Taxed Enough Already and actually started protesting back in 2009 over the bank bailout. This group throws wall street in the name, but is a liberal talking point movement. Its funny actually, because they're protesting the very people Obama is begging for donations from and who bankrolled his campaign in 2008.

And yes, its been reported that some tea party activists are out there, but this isn't the tea party.

The funny thing is that when this started on September 17th, they didn't know what their one demand would be. They ended up taking a vote on it, but I forgot what it was. Subsequently, they have added a $20 minimum wage, a living wage, free college education, forgiveness of all debts, and assorted other nonsense to their list of demands.

It was originally called "Day of Rage" and was supported by several socialist organizations, but I can't find the list right now. Since then, Van Jones, Michael Moore, Roseanne Barr, and George Soros have supported them, so you know it's up to no good.

Last weekend, over 700 of them were arrested for blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge. I just wonder if anybody told them that Wall Street was "that way". Also, some NYC unions joined them for a few hours yesterday, so it has been officially "astroturfed" now. In the end, the first real cold front will do them in, and all the trust fund kiddies will return home to mommy and daddy. But it will be fun to laugh at them until they do.

Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is a movement whose activism is planned and organized via a free, open-source social networking website for activists. That website is maintained by an independent group of organizers who describe themselves as “committed to doing technical support work for resistance movements.” Strongly anti-capitalist, OWS characterizes America as a “ruthless,” materialistic society where the chief objective is to “always minimize costs and maximize profits”; where “lives are commodities to be bought and sold on the open market”; and where “the economic transaction has become the dominant way of relating to the culture and artifacts of human civilization.” The “deep spiritual sickness” that necessarily results from this repugnant philosophy of perpetual economic "growth for the sake of growth," says OWS, has caused “vast deprivation, oppression and despoliation ... to cover the world.” OWS's prescribed remedy is to replace the foregoing arrangement “with a society of cooperation and community” – i.e., a socialist economy.

Moreover, OWS organizers advocate the imposition of a "Robin Hood Tax" (i.e., taking from the "rich" and giving to the "poor") on most goods and services worldwide, with the aim of using its generated revenues to fund social-welfare programs. Such a tax was originally the brainchild of non-governmental organizations based mostly in the United Kingdom. A prominent supporter of the Robin Hood Tax is the economist Jeffrey Sachs, a key member of the George Soros-funded Institute for New Economic Thinking.

Additional OWS demands include the following: a “guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment”; a $20-per-hour minimum wage; ending “the fossil fuel economy”; “open borders” so “anyone can travel anywhere to work and live”; $1 trillion for infrastructure; $1 trillion for “ecological restoration”; “free college education” for all; and forgiveness of “all debt on the entire planet, period.”

Describing itself as a "leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions," OWS says: "The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants."

OWS was a key organizer of the September 17, 2011 “Day of Rage” protest targeting Wall Street, the hub of New York City's financial district. According to the group, the purpose of that event was to express “opposition to the principle that has come to dominate not only our economic lives but our entire lives: profit over and above all else.” Other noteworthy organizers of the September 17 rally, which drew approximately 1,000 participants, included USDayOfRage, NYC General Assembly, Take The Square, the AdBusters Media Foundation, and Anonymous.

According to journalist Aaron Klein, the September 17 protests apparently represented “the culmination” of a campaign by Wade Rathke, founder of ACORN and president of an SEIU local in New Orleans, who in March 2011 had issued a call for “days of rage in ten cities around JP Morgan Chase” -- part of his so-called "anti-banking jihad." Rathke's efforts were supported by Stephen Lerner, an SEIU board member and radical-left organizer who candidly aims to “destabilize the folks that are in power and start to rebuild a movement”; “bring down the stock market” through a campaign of disruption; “bring down [the] bonuses” of executives in the financial sector; and “interfere with their ability to ... be rich.”

Occupy Wall Street pledged that during the weeks and months after September 17, 2011, its members would continue to “launch daily smart mob forays all over Lower Manhattan … peaceful, creative happenings in front of [such places as] Goldman Sachs, the SEC, the Federal Reserve, [and] the New York Stock Exchange.” “With a bit of luck, and if fate is on our side,” OWS said, “we may be able to turn all of lower Manhattan into a site of passionate democratic contestation – an American Tahrir Square.” (This was a reference to the major public town square in Cairo which had served as a focal point for the Egyptian Revolution of 2011.)

On October 1, 2011, a horde of the Wall Street demonstrators shut down traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge for two-and-a-half hours, a move that resulted in some 700 arrests. Among the high-profile personalities who had already made personal appearances in support of the demonstrators were Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Russell Simmons, Cornel West, Charles Barron, Frances Fox Piven, and Charles Rangel.

Front groups of the community organization ACORN played a major role in organizing the OWS protests nationwide. For instance, the Working Families Party (WFP), a longtime ACORN front, helped mobilize the demonstrations in New York City. "[We are] actually trying to change the capitalist system we have today because it’s not working for any of us," WFP organizer Nelini Stamp told Laura Flanders of Free Speech TV in an interview.

Meanwhile, ACORN’s newer front groups were likewise deeply involved in launching and spreading the OWS movement in October 2011. For instance, New York Communities for Change -- led by longtime ACORN lobbyist Jon Kest -- helped WFP organize the demonstrations in lower Manhattan. In Pennsylvania, Action United participated in the "Occupy Pittsburgh" rallies. In Florida, Organize Now took part in "Occupy Orlando." The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment led the "Occupy L.A." protests. And New England United for Justice, headed by former ACORN national president Maude Hurd, participated in the related “Take Back Boston” rallies in Massachusetts.

OWS's mission is supported also by a host of activist organizations and leftwing labor unions, including the Working Families Party, the Communist Party USA, the International Socialist Organization, the Peace and Freedom Party, the Democratic Socialists of America, National People's Action, Citizen Action, MoveOn.org, Common Cause, 350.org, the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, and the Service Employees International Union.

NEW YORK, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Protesters with the Occupy Wall Street movement threatened on Thursday to block any efforts by clean-up crews to enter their camp to clear away three-weeks worth of debris, raising concern about a potential showdown between demonstrators and police.

While New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said their protests can continue as long as laws are obeyed, the city has become concerned over the build-up of trash and general wear and tear on Zuccotti Park, headquarters for the demonstrators.

Bloomberg visited protesters at the park on Wednesday night and informed them it would be cleaned by work crews on Friday, a move demonstrators said was a ploy to permanently drive them from their camp about five blocks from City Hall in lower Manhattan.

"What's been said is that we can come back later, but of course we're skeptical," said Jeff Schurte, 29, who recently earned his master's degree in international development. "This could just be an excuse to get us out permanently."

Owners of the park notified protesters that once each section was reopened after about four hours for clean up, rules would be enforced against camping and/or the erection of tents and other structures, lying down on the ground or benches, placing tarps or sleeping bags on the ground, storage of personal property.

Occupy Wall Street pledged to resist any effort by cleaning crews or police to enter the park, asking protesters to create a human chain around the area to "peacefully/non-violently stand our ground," according to a post on its Facebook page.

The movement, which began on Sept. 17, plans to undertake its own massive clean-up effort and sent out requests for mops, brooms, garbage bags and power washers. But protesters also objected to Bloomberg's description of the camp.

"I don't feel that the story presented by the city, by the mayor, is accurate, that the place is so unsanitary and filthy that there's vermin and things like that," said Schurte. "I haven't seen any vermin or cockroaches the whole time I have been here."

Since an unremarkable beginning, the protests have spread across the United States, as people in other cities take up the cry against the billions of dollars in bank bailouts doled out during the recession that is allowing banks to resume earning huge profits while many average Americans struggle with lost jobs and savings.

In Austin, Texas four protesters were arrested on Thursday for criminal trespassing after they refused to leave the protest site outside City Hall when city workers came to clean the area.

Lauren DiGioia, 26, who has spent the past week at Zuccotti Park and is a member of Occupy Wall Street's sanitation committee, said she was concerned that violence could break out in New York if workers attempted to enter the camp.

Former Vice President Al Gore threw his support behind the Occupy Wall Street protests Wednesday night, arguing that the country’s elected officials have failed the public on everything “from the economy to the climate crisis.”

Gore, a vocal advocate of policies to address climate change, called the protests — which have spread around the country — a “true grassroots movement.”

“From the economy to the climate crisis, our leaders have pursued solutions that are not solving our problems; instead they propose policies that accomplish little,” Gore wrote on his blog Wednesday night.

“With democracy in crisis, a true grassroots movement pointing out the flaws in our system is the first step in the right direction. Count me among those supporting and cheering on the Occupy Wall Street movement.”

Gore said a Sunday editorial in The New York Times “hit the nail on the head,” noting that he has read about the protests “with both interest and admiration.”

“The message — and the solutions — should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention since the economy went into a recession that continues to sock the middle class while the rich have recovered and prospered,” the Times editorial said. “The problem is that no one in Washington has been listening.”

The editorial responded in part to criticism that the message of the protests is unclear.